Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Police in northern China have detained three men in the deaths of two women whose corpses were to be sold as “ghost brides” to accompany dead men in the afterlife, state media said.
Authorities indicated that the killings last year were not isolated cases, the Legal Daily newspaper said on its Web site, but it did not give any details.
Yang Dongyan, 35, a farmer from Shaanxi province, said he had bought a young woman for $1,600 and planned to sell her as a bride, according to the paper.
But then he met Liu Shenghai, who told him that the woman could command a higher price as a “ghost bride,” it said.
Yang killed the woman, bagged her body and sold her for $2,077 to Li Longsheng, an undertaker, who said he could find a buyer, the paper said.
